Thursday, 30 April 2009

Tidying up

We adopted this little tortoise fellow from Hackney City Farm. They have a box of all the unwanted clay projects from their kids workshops. We offered a donation, and this guy followed us home. He's sitting in the strawberry plant, protecting it from the gazillion pigeons which poo and nest all over our building.In other news, I've spent some time tidying things up and painting some old terracotta pots that we managed to pick up from James' parents. I'm also trying to work out how to grow runner beans in the small space that we have (I've got a few ideas). Runner beans are magical, and the speckled black and pink seeds are equally fairytale. These are the seeds that Jack swapped Daisy the cow for. They're incredible. In addition, runner beans were the only green vegetable I ate up until I was 16. That's because I learned to grow them when I was about 9 and there's nothing more satisfying than eating something you just grew from seed to towering vine. So I'm going to get some, and they can climb up the railings and beyond to the land of the giants.

As for tomatoes, we bought two varieties at Beaconsfield farmer's market (4th Saturday of the month. Go, it's lovely). The two varieties we bought were: 'Moneymaker' for some sympathetic magic, and 'Golden Sunrise' for its gorgeous yellow colour. I also picked up a couple of 'Roma Plum' tomato plants from Brick Lane cos they were cheap and we don't have a decent windowsill in the flat to have started them from seed. That's my excuse anyway. They're getting a little bit too big for their pots so this Saturday we're probably going to try and plant them into grow bags or long containers with some supports. How exciting.

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About

Inspired by the resurgence in allotment growing, this blog documents our journey creating our own piece of innercity greenspace. We're hoping to transform an unaesthetic ex-council-block concrete balcony in London into a thrifty edible oasis. Constrained by lack of money, we're recycling as much as possible, trying finding ways to grow food as cheaply as possible.